Developing online communities to facilitate academic discourse

1
Developing on-line communities to facilitate
academic discourse

• Alastair Irons, Paul Irvine,Emil Petkov
• 5th Annual Conference on the Teaching of
  Computing
• Belfast 2004

2
Objectives of Presentation

• Share experiences of establishing on-line
  academic community
• Link experience to practice
• Suggestions for enhancing on-line academic
  environments
• Using experience to enhance teaching practice
  using online communities

3
Rationale for Online Community

• Need to develop academic culture and encourage
  academic discourse
• Success of face to face educational sessions
• Principles of sharing best practice
• Geographic spread (6 buildings)
• Lack of a physical common room

4
Choosing the Environment

• Use of Blackboard
• Set up as community rather than a module
• Discussion board and announcements
• Asynchronous communications rather than
  synchronous
• All staff use BB in teaching, therefore have
  access and experience
• Able to make use of usage statistics
• Autonomy of contributions

5
Launching the Project

• Established online community something staff
  wanted
• (School Forum and Educational Development group,
  further publicity through e-mail)
• No consultation on format that staff wanted
• Belief that participation would act as motivator
  and generate momentum
• Instructions on how to enrol in community (ease
  of access)

6
Encouraging Participation

• Open to all staff
• Volunteers
• Default all
• Consideration of control
• who chose the topic for discussion
• who was first contribute to topic
• Motivation
• Benefit to staff
• Feedback

7
Typical Discussion Topics

• Role of online community
• Groupwork in assessment
• Student attendance at classes
• Examination performance
• Pandon discussion
• Poster exhibition

8
Learning from Experience

• Staff didnt like open and free structure
• Therefore chose topics for discussion
• Different types of contributors,
• Writers (some very long), readers, frequent
  participants, casuals, non-confident, pseudo
  e-mailers
• Staff didnt like empty areas
• Population of discussion area
• Initial discussion contributions before general
  release
• Clarity of what was happening as a result of
  contributions
• Need to housekeep area
• Keep up to date
• Provide summary

9
Feedback from Participants

• Those who enrolled thought it very beneficial
• Need to promote value and benefits
• Need to understand value and consequence of
  contributing and participating
• Concern about policing
• Reluctance to participate in subjects that they
  didnt know much about
• Perception of judgement by peers

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Consideration for Improvements

• Clarity of value of community
• Clarity of role
• Evidence of something happening as a result
• Ease of access transparency
• Code of conduct
• Democracy, flexibility or bureaucracy
• Guest editor
• Publicity

11
Applying Findings to Teaching Environment

• Online environment should have pedagogic
  rationale
• Teachers should be prepared to change teaching
  practice and not only use environment to maintain
  existing practice
• Integral part of teaching environment not just an
  add on
• Appreciate role of writers, listeners and
  non-participants
• Online environment should enhance quality of
  student experience
• Work on student confidence
• Perception of participation levels
• If students think others are participating will
  they contribute ?
• Critical mass of participation ?
• Value in participation should be clear
• Feedback to students

12
Summary and Further Work

• How to use on-line community to add value
• Value and benefit needs to be explicit
• Integrate into existing activities
• Apply principles beyond boundaries of one
  institution
• Explore role of different types of contributors